Company News

November 19, 2009|The Morning Call

Crayola to break ground on 15-acre solar farm

Crayola officials and employees, along with partners of PPL Corp. and UGI Energy Services Inc. and elected officials will break ground at 10 a.m. today for a 15-acre solar farm at Crayola's Forks Township headquarters, 1100 Church Lane.

They will be joined by Secretary John Hanger of the state Department of Environmental Protection and state and local elected officials to break ground.

When completed next summer, more than 26,000 fixed photovoltaic solar panels will convert sunlight into electricity, generating 1.9 megawatts of electrical power.

The solar facility will provide 10 percent of Crayola's total annual energy consumption, enough energy to make 1 billion of the 3 billion Crayola crayons the company makes each year. Generating the same amount of electricity with fossil fuels would produce about 1,900 tons of greenhouse gases per year. This reduction of green house emissions is the equivalent of planting 400 acres of pine forest, removing 325 cars from the road and reducing consumption of 200,000 gallons of gasoline.

Harleysville National Bank donates $25,000 to local parks

As part of its commitment to supporting green space throughout the Delaware and Lehigh valleys, Harleysville National Bank and East Penn Bank presented more than $25,000 to parks and recreation departments across the bank footprints as part its plant-a-tree fund.

The money will be divided and distributed among the following counties: Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Chester, Lehigh, Monroe, Montgomery, Northampton and Philadelphia. Additionally, Alderfer Park, in Harleysville, and Emmaus, will both receive additional funding to ensure these communities remain green and vibrant for years to come.

The donation comes as part of the bank's recent green banking campaign which encouraged customers to participate in paperless banking. The bank is contributing $1 on behalf of customers, who participated by signing up for and selecting green products and services linked with the campaign. The bank is delivering on its promise to support green initiatives, with its plant-a-tree fund, throughout the communities it serves. "It was always our hope with this green banking campaign that the results would be shown in a number of ways. So we're very excited about the lasting effect that our plant-a-tree fund will create. At Harleysville National Bank and East Penn Bank, we believe very strongly in supporting our neighborhoods," Deb Takes, president and CEO of Harleysville National Bank, said.